An Affair of Vengeance (17 page)

“Why not? She’s a sweet little puss.”

“I know. I love her. It’s just—well, you must know how it is. It’s stupid to get attached to anything in this job. I’ll have to leave her behind when I go. I can’t even think about how abandoned she’s going to feel when that happens.”

“Take her home with you, then.”

“Home?”

“Sure. When you’re done with all this.”

She sipped her tea, staring at him from above the rim of the cup.

“You can’t plan on being in the field forever,” he said when she didn’t respond.

“Sure I do. Don’t you?”

“Yes, but…” He stopped, knowing he’d been about to say that she was too young and unspoiled to get trapped in this awful world. She’d only hear an insult to her abilities, or sexism he’d rather think of as chivalry. Best to shut up. Two could play the silence game. He lifted his cup to his mouth. The tea was still warm, despite the thinness of the china.

“But what?” She cocked her head, still waiting. Stubborn woman.

“Nothing.”

“Come on.”

“Well, you’re a young woman.”

“What does me being young and a woman have to do with how long I stay in the field?”

Everything
. “This is no life for a nice girl.”

“It’s a good thing I’m not a nice girl, then.” She smirked, but the expression didn’t soften her dark eyes. Lovely jumped into her lap, and when Evangeline leaned forward to kiss the animal on its salt-and-pepper head, her robe fell apart. She wasn’t wearing a bra, or a shirt, or any other bit of clothing to keep him from noticing that the inner curves of her breasts were the color of pale pearls in the diffuse morning light.

McCrea’s breath jammed in his throat. Ten feet away, her rumpled bed beckoned to him. As small and unadorned as it was, it would be more than suitable for what he was thinking of doing on it.

No. Inappropriate. Lecherous! They were partners now. He willed himself to concentrate on anything but her nakedness
under that fluffy robe, to think of anything but how soft her lips had felt under his own last night, and how her mouth would taste of sugar and lemon if he kissed her again right now.

All he’d have to do is reach across the small table, cup her chin in his hand, and pull her lips to his. The skin of her throat would feel silky as a flower under his fingers. He would take his time, kiss her slowly, and memorize the contours of her mouth. Then their passion would grow and they would stand, reaching for each other with the urgency of new lovers. With his eyes locked with hers, he would untie the knot of cotton at her waist and she would slip out of her robe. Her bare skin would glisten like satin. She would smile. She would tease him.

And she would take him.

He shook his head clear. He hated himself for thinking about taking sexual advantage of his new partner. It’d just been so long since he’d talked to a woman who knew who he really was, and she was so pretty and understanding and so very, very close to being undressed…

“McCrea.”

“Yeah?”

She’d closed her robe and leaned back in her chair, and was now staring at him with both eyes narrowed. “I didn’t accept this mission to get closer to you.”

“I didn’t think you had.” He felt like a schoolboy.

“Then don’t ogle me like I’m here for your pleasure.”

“I’m sorry. But you can’t run around half-naked and not expect a man to look at what you’ve got on offer.”

“I’m not on offer,” she spat. “Whatever happened between us in the past, this is a mission now, not a rendezvous.”

The devil in him made him ask, “Was it not a mission before?”

Her lips parted. He thought she’d answer him, but then her teeth snapped back together with an audible click. “We should go.”

H
OT WIND CHURNED
Evangeline’s hair before she had a chance to tie a scarf around her head. Looking at herself in the visor mirror through large black sunglasses, she grimaced. It looked like a weaverbird had built a nest on top of her head. She pulled a comb out of her purse and tried to tease the knots apart. “This is why I will never buy a convertible.”

McCrea gave her a quick look from the driver’s seat. A faint smile relaxed his face. “You look like a gorgon.”

She swallowed a gasp, but the offhand word hit her hard. Her father had called her a gorgon, too.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”

“No, it’s fine.” She stared out at a passing grove of trees, finding reassurance in their regimented rows. “You just surprised me. My dad used to call me Medusa.”

“Not the kindest nickname for a girl.”

“He meant it sweetly. You’d have to know him to understand.”

“You two close?”

“We were close enough. He was busy, always busy, from as early as I can remember. But he was doing good work, so I never begrudged him for it. My mom, either.” She rested her arm on the door, wondering if he’d caught her use of the past tense.

“What did they do?” he asked, after he snaked the car around a slow truck on a straightaway.

He’d noticed. She was grateful for not having to explain that they were gone. “My mother was a civil servant. Worked in embassies, dealt with Americans in trouble in foreign countries. She was very kind. My dad was state department, too, but he was on the political track. He dealt with foreign leaders and such. A bit stubborn, but he was fearless. He eventually went out on his own, started his own nonprofit.”

“Why didn’t you go the diplomatic route, too?”

“I was going to. Things change.” She watched a bird soar high overhead. A golden eagle, judging from its wing shape and span. “And here I am.”

“That about explains it.”

Sarcasm. She turned and caught his grin. “Medusa had all-seeing eyes, you know.”

“I do know. She could also turn men to stone.”

She laughed. “So can I. So you’d better keep your eyes on the road.”

He obeyed as he navigated the nimble German car around a tight turn. Krai’s compound was only a couple of hours outside of Marseille, but the narrow roads were treacherous and slow off the expressways. The countryside was beautiful, though. These were the Alpilles, or little Alps, and they were glorious. Her parents had loved vacationing in these wild foothills of the South of France. Evangeline could understand why, for the area couldn’t feel more remote yet romantic. White limestone cliffs soared above ambling vineyards, orderly olive groves, and gray-green scrub. August heat infused the aromatic oils of rosemary, lavender, and thyme into the air.

And her partner’s tanned skin glowed like honey in the late-afternoon sun. As she watched, he downshifted to punch up a steep hill. His legs pumped the pedals and his narrow khaki slacks exposed every detail of his strong legs.

What would happen if she let her hand fall? She stared, imagining those tight muscles sliding like pythons beneath her palm.

She forced her attention back to the landscape. “How long before we’re there?”

“Minutes, far as I can tell.”

“How much of a problem do you think it’ll be that I’m with you?”

“We can assume that you’ll be known by whoever invited me. The episode with Penard at Avarice was public. Ménellier certainly had an agent inside who saw it. Whoever we’re meeting may well have heard about it by now, too.”

“Great.”

He gave her a sidelong glance. “It’s good. It gives us legitimacy as a couple.”

“Couple.” She rolled the word in her mouth. “That’s an unlikely word. Would your gangster McCrea really be one half of a couple?”

“No. He wouldn’t. He never has been.” He gripped the leather-wrapped wheel with both hands as he took a bend in the road at precarious speed, accelerating out with professional confidence. His strong thighs tightened again. Evangeline tried not to look.

“You’d be his lover, not his girlfriend,” he continued.

“So I’m a nitwit.”

He shot her a curious look, one eyebrow raised up over his aviator shades.

“I don’t see why any woman with at least half a brain in her head would get involved with a guy like you,” she said, and then clarified, “a guy like you’re pretending to be.”

“Your waitress character has a thing for criminals. You’ve been cozying up to Penard for, what, weeks? Months?”

“It’s the job. I never take contact with an asset over the line.” But she had, with him. “Usually,” she appended weakly.

“So she looks like she’s got bad taste and no sense.”

“Hey!”

“Not you.
Her
. But if you’re going to portray the sort of woman who’d date a Serge Penard, you have to get inside her head. Become her completely.”

“I never dated Penard,” she quickly responded, insulted that he imagined she’d actually do such a thing. Still, she knew that he could only judge her on what he’d seen her do, and he’d seen her do some very unprofessional things, indeed. “Is that what you do? Become your character completely?”

He showed no signs of having heard her question.

“I’m sorry,” she said, not knowing why she was apologizing, except that he’d clammed up rather suddenly. “It’s just that I don’t often meet people with my job. I wonder how other people handle it.”

Silent and still, he swept the car around another hairpin turn.

“I met men at the Farm who’d been clandestine their whole careers,” she said. “There was always something competitive in the way they talked about their time undercover, like who’d turned the most assets, or who’d been in which war-torn city the longest without getting made. Like it was a game.”

“It’s no game.”

“What is it, then?”

“Different for everyone.” His jaw muscle tensed.

“What’s it for you?”

“It’s just a way to live.”

“It’s no life,” she said. “You said that yourself. It’s something else. Revenge, redemption, an unrelenting thirst for adventure…”

“Patriotism?”

“Certainly. But whatever this is, I agree. It’s not a game. The notion cheapens it.”

Leather creaked as he shifted. “So why do you do it?”

“It’s my job.”

“Why’d you pick the job?”

“To serve my country.”

His head tilted in her direction. “So you’re going with patriotism?”

“Sure.”
Partly
. She reached into her bag for a tube of lipstick, beginning to wish she hadn’t asked him how he lived with the job. She couldn’t expect him to open up without doing the same herself, and she didn’t want to talk about why she’d joined the CIA. Her reasons were too personal.

“What else?”

She chuckled. “Maybe I like living on the edge, alone and afraid, with nothing but my wits to save me from certain and painful death.”

“The thirst for adventure.” He smiled. “That’s more like it. And why’d you go against protocol to run me to ground?”

She tipped her sunglasses back on her head and used the visor mirror to watch as she applied color to her lips. The answer was more than she wanted to reveal, but he should know, at least, what they were walking into. It was only fair. “Because of Krai.”

“You knew that I was going to meet with Krai before you saw the directions Ménellier gave me?”

She nodded.

“How?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Try me.”

She tucked the lipstick back into her purse. “You know I’ve been trying to get Penard to be my informant, right?”

“I’d guessed as much.”

“Good. Well, he hasn’t taken the bait yet, but sometimes he gives me intel for free.”

“Useful clot.”

“Especially when he’s drunk. A while ago, he told me that he’d done deals with Krai. When you muscled past Penard and up to Ménellier, well, I figured Krai was next in line. I know Ménellier spends time at his compound.”

“They could just be mates.”

“Nobody is just mates with Krai. And I know Krai is dirty. So I ran you harder than I otherwise would have.”

“How do you know what no one else can prove?”

Her stomach floated into her throat as the car crested a hill and dipped abruptly into a valley. “My dad knew. I don’t know how. Maybe he got on the inside. Maybe he just said what everyone else was thinking. But however he came to his conclusion, I believed him. I always trusted his judgment, and I’m not about to stop just because he said something that was very unpopular.”

“Was your dad a spook, too?”

“No.” Just the facts. No emotion. Just tell him what he needed to know. “After he left the State Department, he ran a nonprofit peace-advocacy group. He’d been campaigning against smugglers who hid behind legitimate businesses.”

“Like Kral.”

“Exactly. And he took the fight public. He pointed his finger at Krai in a press conference.”

“I’m sure that didn’t go over well.”

“No. It didn’t.”

“What happened?”

“Car bomb, apparently random. Took my father and my mother along with seven others in a crowded market in Arles. Wounded many more.”

“When?”

“Eight years ago. December twentieth.” She got the words out in a single breath. She’d had to. Her next exhalation was too ragged to support speech.

McCrea kept his eyes on the road. She was grateful. She needed a moment to recompose herself.

“So that’s why you’re doing this,” he said.